Spooked (18 page)

The whispers grew louder, roaring in my ears. I pushed myself up, looking around me, trying to see everywhere at once.

“It’s okay. You’re safe now.” The young male voice came from behind me.

I spun around. Cole Nichols walked toward me, his police gun in one hand, the other held out, moving slowly up and down, making calming motions. “Lorelei, it’s okay.”

Hot tears moved over my cheeks. I’d always imagined I’d be strong in dire situations, because I always had been strong. But at that moment I felt utterly and completely lost. I had no family. I was alone in the world. The only people I had close to me were Fiona and Mick. And Fiona might be gone forever.

Mick. Where are you
?
Please don’t be dead. Had the shadow spooks gotten to him
? The thought was too much to bear.

I scanned the road beyond the property.

Cole put an arm around me, his gray eyes searching my face. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, still unable to speak. I felt my chin trembling and a sob escaped my lips before I could swallow it down.

“You’re one lucky girl, Lorelei. You know that?”

I nodded again, the effort of choking back another sob taking all my energy from me. I was shaking.

The whispering was so loud now that I could barely hear Cole speaking to me. He was leading me to the cabin, his arm steadily pushing me along.

I turned to him, watching as he looked around, as if making sure nobody were watching.

Something wasn’t right.

As we climbed the few stairs leading to the porch, one word became clear and strong, whispered in unison:
Run
!

Fiona’s ghosts whirled around me, but I was too close to Cole.

Run, run, run, run, run, run
!

If I got far enough away from the cabin, and into the snow, Fiona’s ghosts would camouflage me.

The door opened and I whirled, leaping off the top stair and landing on the snowy ground, almost losing my footing.

“Lorelei!”

I shot forward, heading to the woods. I heard Cole come after me, his feet pounding on the wood.

I felt his fingers scrape against my back, trying to grab a handful of my coat. A startled cry echoed in the night. Without turning, I knew that he’d lost his footing.

I said a silent prayer of thanks for the ice beneath the snow.

I ran. I ran through the snow, into the trees edging the property. I ran until my breath was ragged in my chest, my throat burning, and ducked behind a huge, gnarled old tree.

Cole screamed my name, a howl of frustration and rage.

Fiona’s ghosts moved around me, thick and protective.

I slowed my breathing and tried to calm my pounding heart. I closed my eyes for a second, listening.

A woman’s voice. My eyes snapped open.

“You idiot!” she was saying to him. I barely made out Mrs. Tanner. She stood, her image spectral under the porch light, looking out toward the woods.

Searching for me.

She threw her arms into the air. “Go find her. She can’t have gone far.” She turned and walked back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

Cole was already making his way toward the woods. Toward me. He stopped at the edge of the woods, his head turning slowly, scanning the woods, like a condor searching for prey. “Lorelei! Come on, now. You’ll freeze out here. Come on inside. Miranda’s waiting inside.”

Miranda? I frowned. Were they friends?

Of course. They were lovers.

Mrs. Tanner came out of the house. In moments, she was coming down the stairs, dressed in boots and a bright red winter jacket.

“Lorelei!” Mrs. Tanner called as she followed Cole toward me. “Come inside. You’re safe now, but not if you freeze to death out here!”

I blinked away snowflakes that had fallen on my lashes, watched Cole and Miranda Tanner as they searched for me, wolves in sheep’s clothing. I reached out and mentally probed them both. I swayed where I crouched, grabbing the tree for support. I’d never read two people at once before, and images came at me, bright and quick, like flashes of lightning.

Miranda Tanner, sitting in her car outside the cabin, watching Eliza Ford framed by the window as she looked out into the night. I felt hatred coming off her as she watched her husband Edward coming up behind Eliza, embracing her and then kissing her as she smiled up at him, tilting her face toward him.

I felt her blood boil. But it wasn’t about heartbreak—it was about competition. She had been the prettiest girl, not so long ago, and Eliza had no right stealing that spot from her. Stealing her husband’s attention. Eliza had to be taken care of, fast. Miranda wouldn’t be in second place. Ever.

Then Brianna, whose text messages Edward had forgotten to erase. Some of which referred to the unborn baby.

Kerry, opening the door and launching herself into his arms and wrapping her legs around him as he carried her inside, kissing her mouth the entire way, and using his foot to slam the door closed behind them.

Miranda had watched that door slam behind Edward and his young lovers, and decided, each time, that the girl had to die. That maybe Edward would learn that she was the only one he could ever really love. It didn’t matter how many affairs she had. She had to be the only one for any man she was involved with.

But Edward never learned.

He’d made a key for each girl. As each girl vanished, he’d simply make a new key.

But it wasn’t Edward Tanner who had caused their disappearance. It was Miranda. And Cole.

Edward had never made the connection between him and the disappearances of his young lovers.

Lorelei saw Cole’s booted feet climb the stairs to the cabin, and then his gloved fist knock on the door. He knew they came an hour early and waited until Edward finished his last class and arrived for his romantic rendezvous with them.

Cole had been the one to murder, bury, and clean up. He had planted Kerry’s shoe in the woods for the search party to find, throwing the investigation off.

All three girls were buried in these woods. They were whispering to me now.

I closed my eyes and listened to the panicked, urgent warnings of three dead girls.

Three that you know of
, I thought.

“There is nowhere left to run. I have nowhere else to go,” I whispered back to them.

A scream cut the frigid air. My eyes snapped open in time to see Miranda Tanner trying to run through the high snow, falling, hands and arms buried as she tried to push herself back to her feet. I followed her horrified eyes to the driveway. Delia, a flamboyant, purple feathered witch hat propped crookedly on her head, came shambling along through the bright blood on the fresh fallen snow.

“Cole!” Miranda fought her way to her feet, and then tried again to run toward the cabin. “Oh my God!”

Cole fired a bullet into Delia, and I cried out, half reaching toward her with outstretched hands, even as I realized that it was no longer Delia and hadn’t been for a long time.

Delia growled deep in her throat as the front of her light pink blouse turned crimson.

He fired another round that knocked her witch’s hat off her head and made her take a few stumbling steps back. She righted herself and headed toward him, leaning forward, head tilted. As she staggered closer, I shrank back at the image of her face, her teeth gnashing and drool frothing her lips and chin. She was hungry.

I felt movement behind me and fell sideways into the snow, trying to spin around to see who had come up on me.

I looked up to see Strummer grinning down at me, his spiked green hair covered in snow.

“You’re welcome,” he said, his voice soft in the winter wind.

I blinked, looking up at him.

He reached a hand out to me and pulled me out of the snow. “We need to stay put for a little bit.”

I nodded, shivering, and hearing my sobs as echoes in the woods. I couldn’t seem to stop. My tears were freezing on my cheeks, and I was beyond caring.

Strummer unzipped his long, black coat and opened it wide, inviting me in.

I moved toward him and closed my eyes as I lay my face against his warm chest, letting his darkness protect me as he wrapped his coat around me.

“Ssssh,” he breathed, holding me close. “Ssssh.”

And I felt warmth surround me, his heat radiating over me.

Moments later I heard Cole’s shrieks as I imagined Delia sinking her teeth into him. Not long after that—breaking glass, and Miranda’s shrill screams slicing through the darkening night.

***

“Where is Mick?” I asked, trembling as we trudged through the snow toward the driveway. I didn’t know how much time had gone by since Delia had climbed through the broken window. She hadn’t come out. I didn’t have to ask Strummer whether she would ever come out of there alive. I already knew the answer.

A set of headlights made their way up the driveway. I squinted in the dark. Mick’s father’s Navigator.

Strummer picked me up as if I weighed nothing. I’d lost weight since the entire nightmare in Saints Hallow began. My clothes had been hanging off me, and my jeans were dangerously close to slipping over my narrow hips.

I wrapped my arms around Strummer’s neck and rested my face against his shoulder, closing my eyes. The energy had drained out of me, and at the moment I really didn’t care what happened to me. I was tired, tired way down deep in the bones.

I heard the truck door open and felt Strummer gently place me on the back seat, careful not to hurt me.

I hated him.

Strummer had taken Delia from me. He’d sent the spook that had invaded her body and killed her.

“You killed my aunt,” I said to him when I felt him settle in next to me.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said. I thought I heard the whisper of humanity in his voice, a glimmer of remorse. But I wasn’t sure.

I opened my eyes and saw Mick’s face, eyes huge as he stared at me, his mouth hanging open, speechless.

“I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure of that either.

He looked at a girl in the passenger seat. I hadn’t notice her before. Dark hair. She turned to me and I saw my own face looking back at me.

“What the hell?” Mick said, looking from her to me and back again.

I blinked. “Yeah. What the hell?”

The girl grinned. My crooked grin. Her hair began to lighten. Her face rounded out.

A pretty blonde girl smiled wickedly at me.

“Betty,” I breathed.

“Hey girl,” she said, and then giggled.

“That’s a neat trick.”

“I thought so. I don’t do it very often. Shapeshifting makes me tired.”

“It was the only way I could think of to keep your friend alive,” Strummer said. “He’d have ended up with a bullet between his eyes if he’d shown up here.” He nodded to Edward Tanner’s dead body, now a mound covered in snow.

“Fiona made him promise to keep him safe,” Betty said.

My heart leapt. “Fiona? She’s okay?”

Betty dropped her gaze. “She’s alive. Lucian found her. Had her picked up by a couple of his goons.”

Lucian had abducted Fiona from the diner.

“She made a deal with Lucian. She’ll work for him for as long as he wants her to, without escaping, if he let us help you,” Betty said.

“You’re kidding,” I murmured. “Why would she do that?”

Betty shook her head slowly. “I’m not kidding. She considers you a sister.”

I felt my brow furrow. “But I only just met her.”

Betty shrugged. “She has no family. They were slaughtered in a home invasion when she was three. She’d left the house through a door left open, found wandering the streets two weeks later. Her ghosts had hidden her from the men who killed her family. They never saw her.” Betty gestured with an open hand to the gray matter still moving around me. “She sent her ghosts to help protect you.”

My eyes filled. “But Lucian…”

“Lucian has a soft spot for Fiona. He won’t hurt her.” Strummer put earbuds in his ears and sat back. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Lucian’s,” Betty said. “Do you have anywhere else to go?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“We’ll drop your friend off first,” she said.

“No.” Mick shook his head. “She’s staying with me.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not like you. You’ll end up hurt, or worse.”

“She’s right,” Betty said. “There are things out there that will steal her for her energy. Things worse than anything you’ve ever seen. They will kill you for her.”

So those were the things my father had hidden me from. The things Delia had tried to keep me safe from.

“I thought it was Lucian. He’s like…the Devil.”

“No. Lucian is a businessman. That’s all. He can keep you safe from the others.”

“Nobody can keep me safe.”

“I’ll try,” Strummer murmured.

“No,” Mick said. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You have no choice, dude.” Strummer sat up and glared at Mick. “Just walk away.”

Mick jammed on the brakes. The truck lurched forward before stopping. He turned toward us and moved his body between the seats, his face an inch from Strummer’s. “Make me.”

Strummer grinned, tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.

Mick’s eyelids fluttered and he fell forward.

“No!” I reached for him. “What did you do?”

“He’s fine,” Strummer said. “Just asleep. Who wants to drive?”

This was my town. I’d drive myself out of it.

I got out of the truck and Strummer helped me move Mick to the passenger seat. Betty moved to the back.

We dropped Mick off, got him into his house, and left the Navigator parked in the driveway.

Then we got into a black sedan that slid to a stop on the curb in front of us.

The tinted window moved down and Lucian’s dark eyes regarded me coldly. “Get in.”

Without a word, the three of us got into the car.

Why not? I had nowhere else to go.

I sat back, my head resting against the back of the seat, and let Fiona’s ghosts move over me as we headed down the road, leading to places I wasn’t sure I wanted to see, but I no longer had a choice.

As we drove along the road, a familiar figure moving along the side of the road made me sit up and shout, “Stop the car!”